Open-IX Association 2018 Board Nominations

Paul Emmons

I have been active in the telecommunications industry since the early 1980s. From the early days of long distance resale, paging, cellular and internet to CLECs and transport networks, I have been involved in many aspects including ownership.

Since 2012 I have primarily been focused on volunteer efforts. I enjoy being active in ARIN and NANOG. I served as Program Director for the North American Network Operators Group's Education Committee. I have taught classes in BGP and Peering for PH-Nog and VANIX. I have also served on the board of ACTA, a former long distance carrier trade group in the 1990s.

I currently serve as Executive Director for Ninja-IX, a not-for-profit that consults for smaller Internet Exchanges and operates exchanges in 7 US markets. I have been involved in OPEN-IX since its inception and believe I can bring an unique perspective as an operator of non profit exchanges.

Matt Griswold

Matt Griswold is currently CTO for United IX, an Internet exchange in Chicago, runs a software company, 20C, and serves on the board for Open-IX as Secretary. He has been instrumental in launching several technology companies, playing key roles in development, networking and system administration.

Mr. Griswold is passionate about peering and Internet communities and has volunteered for many organizations including Euro-IX, NANOG, Open-IX and PeeringDB. He has also been known to enjoy automating everything he can find. He served on the board for the last couple years, before that as Chairman for the IX Group.

"I'm excited about all we've accomplished and would love to continue to help the organization to move forward."

Aaron Hughes

Aaron Hughes is currently an elected Board member of Open-IX and holds the Vice Chair officer position.

Aaron is also the President and CEO of 6connect, a leader in network provisioning automation including global resource management of IPv6/IPv4 Addressing, DNS/DNSSEC control for Service Providers and Enterprises as well as peering automation. He is deeply rooted in community supporting organizations such as ARIN, NANOG, RIPE, APNIC, OpenIX, CaribNOG, and peering communities around the globe. Aaron has held network and system architecture and Sr. level management roles at Lockheed Martin, Cariden Technologies, Terremark, Certainty Solutions, UnitedLayer, Quest Technologies, RCN, UltraNet and Channel(1) Communications among others. In addition, he helped found the Best Current Operational Practices (BCOP) forum and was elected to the ARIN Board of Trustees in 2012 and the OpenIX Board in 2016. He is also a Board member and elected President of PeeringDB and has participated in the administration of PeeringDB for many years.

If re-elected, he will continue to serve the Open-IX community and members by encouraging the committees to add more specific standards in the OIX-1 and OIX-2 areas as well as expanding the scope of OIX into edge services and potentially CES and IoT standards along with oversight and fiduciary duties.

Arnold Nipper

My reason to run for the Open-IX is to bring in my experience in running an very successful IXP (DE-CIX) and being involved in the community (RIPE, NANOG, PeeringDB, DENOG, Euro-IX, IX-F) for decades. A minor aspect also is to bring a bit of non US flavour to the board.

With this background I would concentrate on the IXP part of Open-IX and especially work on more IXP certifications. Having a Diploma in Mathematics with minors in Computer Science and Physics I started my career at University of Karlsruhe as Research Assistant working on the first German Internet connection. This project led to a spin-off of one of the first German commercial ISP where I served as CTO for several years until I took over the role as CTO/COO of DE-CIX.

Since January 2016, I am the Chief Technology Evangelist at DE-CIX, a Board Member of PeeringDB since December, 2015 and Treasurer of DENOG since November, 2017.

Chris Rogers

Chris Rogers joined Zillow Group as a Senior Network engineer in 2018, where he focuses on interconnection strategy and edge networking. Previous to Zillow, Chris spent over 15 years in the networking industry, holding various positions in both large and small network service providers, educational institutions, and enterprises. He is a frequent attendee of NANOG and several other networking and security related conferences.

Chris has been a member of Open-IX for four years, and the IXP committee for one year on which he is currently chair.

Eli Scher

Eli D. Scher is the founder of New Continuum Holdings Corporation, and serves as its Chairman and CEO. Mr. Scher is also the co-founder of United Internet Exchange, LLC and serves as its CEO. He is an entrepreneur with a broad array of investing and operating experience.

Prior to New Continuum, he worked as an analyst at prominent New York hedge funds where he analyzed corporate securities. Previously, Mr. Scher co-founded and served as CEO of GSME Capital Partners, a private, early stage investment partnership, and GSME Acquisition Partners I, a publicly traded acquisition vehicle.

Additionally, he was Chief Financial Officer and director of MCG Group a Shanghai-based LED-advertising company, and was the co-founder, President and CFO of Fundamental Films.

He currently serves as on the board of directors of HMMI, a specialized manufacturer of extremely large and complex steel components.

Eli serves as the Chairman of the Board for the Open-IX Association and previously served as the Chairman of the Data Center Committee.